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Holding truth to account in Brampton: Public Editor

Star's dogged reporting on Brampton city council is outstanding example of watchdog reporting central to journalism’s role in democracy.

Brampton Mayor Susan Fennell complained that Star reporter San Grewal made mistakes in his reporting on Brampton city council. But public editor Kathy English could find only one small error and that was in the misspelling of a name. (Rick Madonik / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

The next day Fennell sent me another email seeking further corrections. She also posted that email on Facebook and urged her Facebook friends to share it widely. As well, she posted it on her Twitter feed. The email was also posted on a Twitter site called “Brampton Truth.”

While I do not know who operates Brampton Truth, Fennell tweeted this week: “Follow @BramptonTruths for facts and truth. Re-tweet their posts — spread the truth. Brampton residents deserve the truth.” The Facebook page of Brampton Truth describes it as a page for “Stopping the smears and telling the truth to Brampton citizens.”

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Fennell, who has been mayor of Brampton since 2000 and is now facing a tough race in her bid for re-election, undoubtedly has strong interest in publicly challenging the Star’s reporting and accusing the reporter who has doggedly held her to account of “bias.”

To be clear, I have no interest in being part of the political fray here. Fennell is well entitled to defend herself publicly and to seek corrections from the public editor’s office of any facts she believes are inaccurate.

It is my job to investigate her concerns about the Star’s reporting and determine if any corrections are called for. To that end, I have spent considerable time questioning Grewal and his editors and examining all of the evidence they have put forward to verify the Star’s reporting.

We cannot find a single factual error in any of the stories Fennell has questioned.

I have gone over Fennell’s lengthy emails point by point. Every step of the way, Grewal and his editors have taken great care in reporting on Fennell and the city of Brampton and have consistently given Fennell opportunity to comment.

In fact, the only correction required on the more than 30 articles Grewal has written about Brampton city politics this year was due to the misspelling of the surname of Councillor John Sanderson, one of Fennell’s opponents for mayor and the councillor who called for a forensic audit of Fennell’s expenses. As it turned out, Grewal had spelled the name correctly but it was mangled in the editing process.

In the email she made public, Fennell makes serious accusations of inaccuracy and unfairness by the Star’s reporter. She believes Grewal is “creating false and misleading perceptions.

“Mr. Grewal has wrongfully published information about me that is misleading the people of Brampton and wrongfully damaging my reputation” And, further, Fennell said, “I believe that Mr. Grewal has a personal motive for unfairly targeting me.”

There is no truth to that allegation.

As I told Fennell in my email response to her this week, I believe her accusation that Grewal has personal motive for his extensive reporting of serious allegations of abuse of the public trust in Brampton is unfounded.

This is not personal for Grewal; it is professional. It is his job to hold politicians and public officials to account. His editors regard Grewal’s work in Brampton as an outstanding example of the “watchdog reporting” the Star values and that is central to journalism’s role in a democracy. I agree.

“As the Star’s urban affairs reporter, Grewal is doing the job the Toronto Star expects of him — that is to report fully, fairly and accurately on Brampton city council and city hall and to hold the city’s politicians and public officials to account,” I told Fennell.

I sent Fennell a detailed response outlining the reasons why I believe no corrections are required on each of the points she deems inaccurate. While space prevents me from including it all here, I hope Fennell makes this public, too.

Having looked carefully into her concerns, the truth from my perspective is this: just because Fennell says the Star’s stories are inaccurate does not make that “Brampton Truth.”

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